By Lilly Ward
Staff Writer
Americans’ views of figures on pedestals occupying public space is troubled. Monuments are concrete objects that bring history to life, often considered to be untouchable or permanent. Chiseled into stone, or mixed into molten bronze is the intent to shape public perception and collective memory. What becomes contentious is whose collective memory is prioritized and whose stories are forgotten.
Grounds For Sculpture’s latest exhibition deals with this complicated relationship, in their latest exhibition, “Slow Motion.” Monument Lab, a public art project based in Philadelphia, explores alternative methods of monument-making that encourage discussion and introspection.
Through monuments, “artists have brought our public symbols into this world in ways that, at their best, give us a vision for how we may live together boldly,” said Paul M. Farber, the director of Monument Lab. “At their worst, we've inherited symbols that have not given us a blueprint for a way that we can live more together.”
“Slow Motion” invites viewers to not only challenge the notions surrounding conventional monuments as unalterable but to immerse themselves in the five artists’ featured concepts of collective memory and unconventional approaches.
On a pedestal that references the iconic steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Sandy Williams IV’s miniature wax monuments stand. William started this series in 2017, amidst a national conversation centered around Confederate monuments and the nation's legacy of slavery and systemic racism. Williams takes 3D scans of public monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty, and shrinks them down into wax forms that are small enough to be held. Williams' work experiments with ideas of permanence and challenges the notion that public monuments are untouchable.
“Our national mythology is about that freedom of space that doesn't actually exist,” said Williams.
For Williams, using wax as a medium references the process of lost wax casting in which sculptors make a mold around a wax form, melt out all the wax, and then pour bronze into the emptied mold. Throughout history, many bronze monuments were created through this process.
“Taking these back to wax was like reversing the time on them, back to when they were malleable and sort of had, um, potential to be something else,” said Willams.
By creating small figures that can be melted down, Williams gives the public agency to engage with the monuments and meditate on the ideals they represent. Melting the figures results in a symbolic gesture that Williams sees as not an erasure of history, but an opportunity for transformation.
Colette’s Fu’s “Noodle Mountain” is a large-scale pop-up book consisting of an entanglement of cardboard noodles unfolds with the aid of a metal crank. Among the swirling heap, Fu, a photographer, book artist and paper engineer, layers insights into American history. “Noodle Mountain” ponders the experiences of Asian Americans and the history of Chinese immigration to America.
Fu’s interest in mining archives for information regarding the experience of Chinese immigrants in the 19th Century stemmed from the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“All the research that went into this started during COVID when I was trying to understand where the hate was coming from,” said Fu.
The metal crank used to open the pop-up book references a machine created in the 19th century to replace Chinese labor, while a braid woven into interlocking strands serves as a reminder of how Chinese immigrants in the 1800s were forced to cut off their queues (a hairstyle consisting of a braid), which were symbolic of their loyalty to China.
Some of the elements, such as the rails of a roller are specific to Fu’s experience of growing up in New Jersey while others highlight historical events. The imagery in “Noodle Mountain” is inspired by a political cartoon from the 1800s of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, the immigration station on the West Coast.
“Noodle Mountain” is an amalgamation of whimsy served with historical reckoning. The combination of the historical and personal allows Fu to honor the stories and legacy of an underrepresented population in American history, and to invite viewers to examine truths unearthed and placed in a bowl of noodles.
An artist and chef, Omar Tate’s work investigates the potential of food to express collective memories. In the gallery, the connection between food and memory is conceptualized through “Blue.” A tree nestled in a mound of earth is adorned with blue bottles, flanked by potted Russian sage and thyme.
While collaborating with the staff at Grounds For Sculpture, Tate, the co-owner of Honeysuckle Projects, a Philadelphia-based grocery and catering business, was struck by the prevalence of the color blue in Grounds For Sculpture's restaurant, Rats. The color reminded Tate of blue bottle trees in the South. The practice of placing blue glass bottles onto tree branches stems from a folk religion known as Hoodoo originating in West Africa. The blue bottles represent the borderline or the separation between the physical and spiritual realm, said Tate.
The bottle tree “is an invisible monument within black culture and black community that describes a particular state of being, feeling and, and comfort and protection,” Tate said.
The tree provides not only a connection to a spiritual realm, but protection from “violence that stems from capitalism, or the coupling of capitalism and racism,” said Tate.
To further the conversation around nourishment, memory and healing, Tate has also conceptualized “Blue,” a 16-month residency that includes unique dinner menus and a recycled bottle tree and garden installation.
Billy Dufala, is the co-founder of the artist collective Traction Company, and of RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residence), an arts organization operating onsite at Revolution Recovery, a recycling company in northeast Philadelphia. Dufala’s monumental work utilizes an unexpected medium: scrap metal.
Existing outside of the gallery, “Future Features” consists of recycled aluminum bales. The monument is temporary. After the closure of the exhibition, the sculpture will be deconstructed and these materials will eventually resurface in the commodities market.
“It's funny because it's a sculpture now,” said Dufala. “Before it was trash.”
“Future Features” honors not only the potential of a material that was once considered trash but also the amount of labor needed to produce the materials from consumption and production and manufacturing to extraction. Although at first glance, the clean compact nature of the sculpture suggests minimalism, the details and textures within the bale invite contemplation of the past lives of the materials used.
“Whenever I give a tour at the recycling center, it's one of my favorite things to do, I always kind of giggle a little bit at how people are dumbfounded at the, at how beautiful these things are,” said Dufala.
Ana Teresa Fernández’s sculpture made up of large letters spells out “SHHH.” The sculpture reflects the surrounding environment, reminiscent of the fluidity of water, while linking climate change to the loss of languages. Fernández, who speaks five languages, is fascinated by the concept of art as a language.
“I came to realize that art is one of the most expansive languages that transcends boundaries, language itself, barriers,” said Fernández.
Her work is a monument to what’s at stake as the damage of climate change continues to escalate. Climate change will create the loss of 7,000 languages by the end of this century due to sea level rise, Fernández said. The reflection of the environment in the sculpture reflects a desire to preserve the land as it currently stands.
The sound “shh” which is universal in many languages can be used to soothe, or chastise. With small reflective discs that shimmer with the slightest breeze, the art mirrors the environment. Fernadez refers to this effect as “the opposite of pointillism.”
“The pointillism, the molecularity, the cellularness, all of this, which makes up that environment, it is alive,” said Fernadez. “It is muteness that speaks.”
The work of the five artists offers a compelling case for ephemeral monuments that require quiet contemplation while conveying a sense of urgency to the exercise agency over public space.
“What I find so inspirational about these artists is that they mobilize playfulness, whimsy and fun in the service of re-excavating and mining some of our most dire political, cultural and historical issues,” said Patricia Eunji Kim, senior editor of the bulletin and curator at Monument Lab.
Slow Motion is on view through Sept. 1, 2025.
